In an exclusive for WrestlingNews.co, Steve Fall interviewed former WWE star Duke “The Dumpster” Droese on his WWE career. Droese has been retired from full-time wrestling since 2001 and he recently appeared on MLW TV earlier this year. Scroll down to watch the entire interview.
On being let go by WWE:
“They sent me home in the middle of a contract. When I resigned the one year deal and got that feud with Triple H, that’s why they gave it to me to keep me and resign me for the extra year rollover, but as soon as I signed it, they did the deal, we did the deal with Triple H and they immediately had him do a 20 second job to the Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania 12 and also immediately put him with Marc Mero. I just went back to lose to all the new heels that came in. The only difference now is I had shorter hair and I was still a babyface, and so I was getting frustrated. Periodically, I’d have these little powwow sessions with me and Vince McMahon and Jerry Brisco standing out in the hallway somewhere and I would express my disgust with how they were using me and I remember a couple of times I said, ‘If you’re going to use me any better than this, just send me home.’ I remember he would always be like, he would pause for a second like he couldn’t believe I said that sh*t to him, and believe me, I was not in the right frame of mind. At that point, I was using drugs. I was injured. My back was hurt. I started doing tons of painkillers. I was always the first guy at the bar and I was just erratic in my behavior. I was really frustrated and I felt like I was ready to just leave and then one day he just, actually what he said first was he was going to send me to Memphis to develop as a heel. He was going to pay me $1,000 a week, which the hilarious thing is that was a lot more money than they were paying me at the time because they had me off the road most of the time and I wasn’t really booked, but I think my response is what got me sent home. I said, ‘I’m gonna need that in writing.’ It looked like Vince bit a turd. He just kind of looked at me like, absolutely, but then like a week later, Jerry Briscoe is walking up to me in the locker room saying, ‘Vince said you go on home.’ I just remember going, ‘It’s over.’ So that’s how it kind of went down in a nutshell.”
On having no money when he got released by WWE:
“I didn’t have any money or anything to show for it, so I was pretty much broke almost immediately and I had this hefty drug problem. So I had to figure out, you know, ways and means to get money and get drugs. I started bouncing in strip clubs and sh*t like that. It was just ridiculous. Yea, it was just bad. It was bad for a while, several years. I think the first couple years (in WWE) I barely broke even. We paid our own road expenses. Remember, we were independent contractors, so we filled out a 1099 at the end of the year and we get to claim our rental cars and hotels and food and stuff like that, anything we spent pretty much on the road as expenses, we got to write off of our taxes, but still, even that being said, I really made almost no money. Vince knew when he had somebody that he could starve. I was a mark walking in the door. Well, he saw me 10 miles away coming and I think that influenced how he paid me in those first couple of years. Plus, I think they’re gonna test you for the first two or three years anyway and they’re gonna kind of starve you and see how your attitude is and make you work for it. Unfortunately, I think some of those tests I failed in the end, but times were lean then anyway. Money was way down for most everybody. There were the haves and the have-nots, and I definitely wasn’t on the big money list. There’s a lot of us work horses on the undercard that would, on a nightly basis, kill ourselves for scraps, basically.”
On appearing at the WrestleMania X-Seven Gimmick Battle Royal:
“It’s interesting at the time. I was down in Miami and I was kind of working with an independent promotion and I was still on drugs. I was really bad off. I remember somebody telling me about this thing they were doing, this Gimmick Battle Royal and they told me I needed to get in touch with somebody. So I had, I think I had Bruce’s office number somewhere and I called him and he got me booked for it. I was in no condition to wrestle in any way shape or form, but you know, it was just a Battle Royal where you walk around and punch and kick each other until it’s time for you to go out of the ring. So that was easy enough and it was great, but I was just kind of embarrassed at the state I was in, so I kind of stayed away from most everybody most of the time.”
This interview is exclusive to WrestlingNews.co. If you use these quotes, please include a link back to this page.
